1 . Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic apparatus and an image forming apparatus, and more particularly to a technology that facilitates management of replaceable parts with different lifetimes.
2 . Description of the Related Art
Existing image forming apparatuses including copying machines, facsimile machines, and printers incorporate replaceable parts detachably attached to the body of the image forming apparatus. The replaceable parts include, for example, print engines and developer material cartridges attached to the print engine of the image forming apparatus. The developer material cartridges have a relatively short lifetime and supplies developer materials to the corresponding print engines. Each replaceable part incorporates a memory tag as a memory that stores items of information about a corresponding print engine, the lifetime of a corresponding developer material cartridge, or the type of the replaceable part.
The memory tag is checked to determine whether the replaceable part is acceptable to the image forming apparatus. If the replaceable part is not acceptable, then an alarm section indicates to the user that the replaceable part is not acceptable. Especially, a particular value of lifetime is selected at the time of design for ensuring printed image quality, and the image forming apparatus makes a decision to determine whether the replaceable part has reached the end of its usable lifetime, before the replaceable part is actually replaced.
Conventional electronic apparatuses including an image forming apparatus suffer from the following drawbacks.
Some users may want to print, even with a somewhat deteriorated print quality, a number of pages exceeding a predetermined maximum number of pages below which printing can be performed with good print quality.
The lifetime of a print engine varies depending on the operating conditions including the type of paper on which the print engine prints. In other words, the number of pages that can be printed with good print quality varies depending on the operating conditions, and therefore the lifetime of the print engine needs to be managed according to the operating conditions.
Replaceable parts including print engines, developer material cartridges, and the like usually have different lifetimes. Therefore, the lifetime of replaceable parts needs to be managed on the basis of the number of combinations of the replaceable parts, the lifetime of the replaceable parts, and the operating conditions under which the replaceable parts operate. This, however, leads to complicated management of replaceable parts.